A Novelist Who Walks the Walk

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A Novelist Who Walks the Walk

An award-winning science fiction writer and digital rights activist is making his first novel available free online for anyone to read, print or even republish on paper.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, a science fiction tale that revolves around the employees of a dystopian Disney World sometime in the 22nd century, is writer Cory Doctorow's first published novel. The 31-year-old Canadian writer won the John W. Campbell Award for best new science fiction writer at the 2000 Hugo convention.

Doctorow's fans aren't surprised to find his book online for free. The plot of his most recent short story, "0wnz0red," involves digital rights management, or how files are protected from sharing and copying.

Moreover, Doctorow is known outside science fiction circles for his prolific, passionate posts about digital rights issues on the BoingBoing weblog and other forums, as well as his work with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"I don't believe that I am giving up book royalties," Doctorow said about persuading his publisher, Tor Books, to let him make Down and Out available digitally for free under the new Creative Commons licensing system.

"(Downloads) crossed the 10,000-download threshold at 8 a.m. this morning," Doctorow said Thursday, "which exceeds the initial print run for the book."

Doctorow said he thinks the marketing buzz from those downloads will be worth more than any lost book sales. "I think that the Internet's marvelous ability to spread information to places where it finds a receptive home is the best thing that could happen to a new writer like me."

Down and Out may be watched closely as a test of whether the Creative Commons license actually helps or hurts writers, but Tor senior editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden said the value of free online publishing has already been demonstrated.

"Cory's experiment seems as worth trying as any number of things I've seen done," Hayden said. "What we're learning about online free distribution of fiction e-texts is that it doesn't hurt the sale of print editions and may even help it. I know plenty of people who've sampled fiction in e-text form, found they liked the taste, and bought a printed book as a result."

"In 1998 we posted the first novel from Dave Weber's Honor Harrington series online," Baen said. "Within a year the title became our No. 1 backlist bestseller. We had a similar experience with Lois Bujold's A Civil Campaign in 1999. It was scheduled for publication the same month as Steven King's latest novel, and beat it on Amazon's preorder list."

Science fiction writers have experimented with digital distribution for years. Novelist William Gibson put the text from his book Agrippa on the Internet in 1992. Neil Stephenson's 1997 online essay about computer interfaces, "In the Beginning Was the Command Line," led Avon Books to publish a book version.

Still, some writers think Doctorow will benefit more from smart timing than anything else.

"It's a great strategy so long as print-on-paper is easier to read than pixels-on-plasma," said novelist Peter Watts, author of Maelstrom and Starfish. "But before long we'll be downloading text onto displays, which are as easy on the eyes as a conventional paperback, and far more compact and durable to boot. I think it's a fine idea for the next 20 minutes or so."